Category: Reviews
Review – Ant-Man (2015)
Director: Peyton Reed
Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Peña, Abbie Rider Fortson, Judy Greer
You just can’t bet against Marvel Studios at the moment. Every time they announce a new project based on some obscure comic that raises your eyebrows and makes you think, “Surely this is the one that they makes them stumble,” they find a way to make it work. Boy did it work with James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy last year and it has worked again, albeit not to quite as drastic an extent, with Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man, a light, funny and surprisingly heartfelt superhero movie.
Decades ago, when working with SHIELD, Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) invented the Pym Particle, a formula that alters atomic relative distance, reducing the space between atoms while increasing their strength. Using his discovery he became the original Ant-Man. However, after a terrible accident he gave up the superhero life and, concerned by the potential weaponisation of his technology, vowed to keep his formula secret. But now his former protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who took over his company Pym Technologies and voted him out, is on the verge of unlocking the secret of the Pym Particle, Continue reading
Review – Mr. Holmes (2015)
Director: Bill Condon
Starring: Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hattie Morohan, Patrick Kennedy, Hiroyuki Sanada
Sherlock Holmes has had somewhat of a resurgence in the last decade. Between Guy Ritchie’s films, the British television series Sherlock and the American series Elementary, the original super sleuth is once again front-of-mind. Rather than piggybacking on the popularity of these other texts, Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes presents itself as an alternative, even an antidote, to the current Holmes craze.
Adapted from the Mitch Cullin novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, this is no modernised, stylised, cool Sherlock Holmes. Rather, we are presented with Holmes (Ian McKellen) as a 93 year old man. Having long since retired and moved out of Baker St, with Watson and Mrs Hudson both deceased, Holmes now resides in a country house in Sussex with his housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her inquisitive son Roger (Milo Parker). While still a keen observer with sharp deductive skills, in his old age Holmes’s memory is starting to fail him. He is working away at his memoirs, trying to set the record straight and record the real versions of the stories that Watson had mythologised. Continue reading
Review – Inside Out (2015)
Directors: Pete Docter, Ronaldo Del Carmen
Starring: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan
In the last twenty years, no Hollywood studio has been as consistently original and imaginative as Pixar. In an era when kid’s movies are so often dumbed down and seem guided primarily by merchandising departments, John Lasseter and his brains trust at Pixar allow themselves to be guided first and foremost by ideas. Their latest offering, Pete Docter (Up, Monsters Inc) and Ronaldo Del Carmen’s Inside Out, arguably represents the zenith of Pixar’s bold originality, taking us inside the mind of a young girl.
Inside Out tells a very small scale story. Eleven-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) lives a happy life with her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) in Minnesota, only to have it unsettled when her father’s work requires the family has to relocate to San Francisco. With no friends, a different house and a new school, Riley starts to feel terribly homesick but doesn’t feel that she can talk about it with her parents. That is all that happens in the movie. At least, that is all that happens on the outside. For the key action in Inside Out actually takes place inside Riley’s mind. In the control room of her mind we meet anthropomorphised emotions, Continue reading
Review – Listen to Me Marlon (2015)
Director: Stevan Riley
Starring: Marlon Brando
Stevan Riley’s documentary Listen to Me Marlon starts with the voice of Marlon Brando explaining how in the 1980s he had his head digitised, scanned with a laser and captured in a computer. We then see this primitive 3D recreation of his face speaking the words we are hearing as Brando describes a future in which actors like himself will be replaced by these malleable recreations. In a way, this becomes a metaphor for the film we are about to watch. Riley uses old footage, photographs and recordings to recreate Brando in an intimate and personal way, in what almost amounts to a posthumous autobiography.
Marlon Brando is one of the most fascinating figures in film history. Regarded by many as the greatest actor in screen history, he cast a large shadow. But many of the attributes that made him such a special talent caused him to struggle greatly under such an intense spotlight. Always a reluctant star, he was reclusive later in life. Even in his youth when he was at his most charismatic, his engagement with the press always saw him playing a role, different roles depending on the situation and his mood, but always careful not to reveal himself. Continue reading
Review – Jurassic World (2015)
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, Jake Johnson, Lauren Lapkus, Judy Greer
There is good news and bad news with Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World. The good news is that it is the best Jurassic Park movie since Steven Spielberg’s original, the blockbuster sensation that ushered in a new world of digital effects on its way to becoming the highest grossing film of all time. The bad news is that saying a film is better than The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 is not saying a lot.
In Jurassic World we see the vision of Jurassic Park realised: a fully functioning theme park and resort island where twenty thousand visitors a day come to see genetically engineered living dinosaurs. It is SeaWorld on steroids. But the park has been open for a while now, and numbers are starting to plateau. As operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) explains. “People aren’t wowed by dinosaurs anymore. Twenty years ago, de-extinction was up there with magic. Now kids look at a stegosaurus like it’s an elephant at the zoo.” So in order to keep the crowds coming, Jurassic World’s team of scientists have moved into a new frontier of genetic innovation. Continue reading
Review – She’s Funny That Way (2014)
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Starring: Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Kathryn Hahn, Rhys Ifans, Will Forte, Jennifer Aniston, Austin Pendleton
She’s Funny That Way is the first feature film in 13 years from celebrated 1970s auteur Peter Bogdanovich. Bogdanovich is known for his love of classical Hollywood cinema, and as he did with his beloved 1972 comedy What’s Up Doc?, here he channels the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s – anarchic and irreverent social satires like The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story. He draws on filmmakers like Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges and Frank Capra with more than a little bit of Bogdanovich contemporary Woody Allen in creating this outrageous farce.
Call girl Izzy Finkelstein (Imogen Poots) has her life changed forever when one a client offers her $30,000 to give up her current line of work and pursue her dream. Izzy’s dream is to be an actress, and the very next day her agent sends her along to a Broadway audition for celebrated director Arnold Albertson (Owen Wilson). What Izzy doesn’t know until she gets on stage is that Arnold Albertson is the philanthropic john from the night before. She is so good that Arnold, despite his discomfort, has no choice but to give her the part. Continue reading
Review – Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Director: George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Zoe Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whitely, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee, Courtney Eaton
In the thirty years since Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome other franchises – chiefly the Fast and Furious – have laid claim to the car chase, but with Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller returns not only to show us that Max is still king of the road, but that a singular creative vision can elevate the action film to the level of high art.
Mad Max 2 (released in the US as The Road Warrior) is generally accepted as the high point of the original trilogy, and that is the film Fury Road uses as its departure point. Fury Road effectively takes the final third of Mad Max 2 (one of action cinema’s great sequences) and makes a whole movie out of it. And it is incredible. Having been captured by the Warboys, the fundamentalist followers of Imortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who actually played the antagonist, Toecutter, in the original Mad Max) Max finds himself caught up in a brazen escape plan as Imortan Joe’s most celebrated and trusted driver, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), uses one of his war rigs to liberate his harem of wives, leaving the Citadel and making a break for ‘the green place.’ Continue reading
Review – Obvious Child (2014)
Director: Gillian Robespierre
Starring: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffman, Gabe Liedman, Richard Kind, Polly Draper
‘Abortion comedy’ is hardly a phrase that rolls off the tongue, ‘abortion romantic comedy’ even less so. It sounds like an oxymoron, or at least in questionable taste. But that is exactly what we get with Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, a brave debut feature unafraid to look honestly at this most divisive of issues.
Donna Stern (Jenny Slate) is a very frank, small-time stand up comedienne. Her material is highly confessional, consisting mainly of sharing her life experiences with her audience, with a generous smattering of bodily functions jokes. She has the rug pulled out from under her when her boyfriend breaks up with her, at least in part due to his discomfort with the details of their relationship being shared so openly with her audience. As part of her meltdown, she has a drunken one-night stand with a clean-cut business student, Max (Jake Lacy), and a couple of weeks later discovers, to her horror, that she is pregnant.
So far, this is nothing really new. Continue reading
Review – Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Director: Joss Whedon
Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, James Spader, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Samuel L Jackson
The 2012 superhero team up movie The Avengers, the culmination of Phase One of Marvel Studios plan for blockbuster world domination, was an enormous success taking $1.5 billion worldwide and becoming the third highest grossing film of all time. So naturally expectation is sky high for their next gathering, Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is still haunted by the events of New York which concluded The Avengers. Knowing what forces exist in the universe he is acutely aware of the limitations of the Avengers. They can only protect the world from so much. With the help of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) he has been secretly working at a plan he calls Ultron, which he imagines as “a suit of armour around the world.” After the Avengers reclaim Loki’s sceptre from a Hydra bunker, Stark and Banner try and harness its artificial intelligence and plant it in Ultron. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so sure enough this plan backfires. Designed to keep the peace, the sentient Ultron (James Spader) sees allowing the Earth to evolve through the elimination of the human race as key to achieving that peace. Continue reading
Review – Annie (2014)
Director: Will Gluck
Starring: Quvenzhané Wallis, Jamie Foxx, Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Cameron Diaz
It is the musical remake that nobody was asking for: a loose, modern retelling of Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin’s beloved stage musical Annie. Gone is the traditional red hair and chirpiness of Little Orphan Annie, which this film lampoons in its opening moments. This Annie, played by Quvenzhané Wallis (from Beasts of the Southern Wild), is no orphan, she’s a foster kid and a savvy one at that.
Annie’s life is changed when she is pulled from the path of a car by Will Stacks (Jamie Foxx) – our substitute Daddy Warbucks – a telecommunications mogul running for Mayor of New York. The incident is captured on video and goes viral, giving Stacks a much needed bump in the polls. With Annie seemingly his election trump card, Stacks’ cynical campaign manager arranges for him to foster her for the period of the campaign.
In seeking to modernise the story the filmmakers appear to have forgotten just how important historical context is to Annie’s tale. Continue reading
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